The Catholic church is not one to shy away from gaudy, impressive, terrifying displays of wealth and power. Over the centuries, Catholicism has burned fear into the minds and souls of many children. Although, in recent years, they have attempted to tone down their medieval horror show, they can’t help but unleash their inner beast on occasion.

The sculpture we’re featuring today is called The Resurrection and was created by Pericle Fazzini. It sits in the Paul VI Audience Hall in Rome, a large building completed in 1971 used by the pope to address his people if it’s too rainy to do it outside.

In case you can’t figure it out for yourself, the sculpture was designed to show the anguish of modern humanity in the face of nuclear armageddon. It depicts Jesus rising out of a nuclear crater in the Garden of Gethsemane. I know, it looks made up, but it’s not. This is not Photoshopped, they actually made this.

Completed in 1977, The Resurrection was restored in 2011. The monstrosity was originally modeled in polystyrene, which was then used for the casting process. During construction, the fumes produced by burning plastics gave Fazzini a blood clot, which, although horrible, seems rather fitting. Here’s Fazzini in happier days:

“Suddenly there came to me the idea of Christ preaching peace for 2,000 years and the place where he prayed for the last time: the olive grove of Gethsemane. I had the idea of depicting Christ as if he were rising again from the explosion of this large olive grove, peaceful site of his last prayers. Christ rises from this crater torn open by a nuclear bomb; an atrocious explosion, a vortex of violence and energy.”

To be fair, that does look like a goat, which is pretty cool. But, to be honest with you, if I was involved in Baphomet worship and wanted to keep it a secret, I wouldn’t build a huge monument to Baphomet as a backdrop to the pope’s weekly audience. But that’s just me.

Other conspiracy buffs have attempted to decode the numerology behind Fazzini’s The Resurrection, proving quite literally nothing at all.

Even David Icke has weighed in on the debate, saying: “The ‘resurrection’ of what, exactly? Jesus with scales? Can you imagine what goes on in this room at night when the tourists and believers have gone home?” Thanks, David, we can always rely on you to make good sense of a situation.

A website called “The End Time” is unimpressed by the sculpture, too, believing it to be ugly and evil; they write, “You wonder what goes through a man’s mind to come up with a horrifyingly evil looking depiction such as that. Remember, Catholics adhere to doctrines and traditions that are not biblical, so the likelihood exists that Fazzini was not saved and therefore had a blinded, depraved mind.”

Personally, I’m a bit of a fan of The Resurrection; it’s an impressive and strikingly weird lump of metal. Understated it is not.